Behind the Curtain

News is about people.

The colossal scale of internet and phone interception, mainly against unknown targets, carried out by the NSA in the US and our very own GCHQ provoked screaming headlines around the world. But the secret attempts to smear the Lawrence family by undercover Met police hit home more directly.

Neville (pictured) and Doreen Lawrence lost their son, Stephen, to a racist gang of thugs and were consistently denied justice by a police force shown to be institutionally racist. It was hard to say at the time, in 1999, when the Macpherson report was published. The senior cops, far removed from the canteen culture and Policeman's Balls accepted some managerial repositioning on diversity but resisted Home Sec Jack Straw's bolder statements on change to rank and file attitudes.

We already know there was barely any enthusiasm for finding evidence in the Lawrence murder case and the assailants seemingly became immune to prosecution. What we didn't know, until now, was there were, simultaneously, mighty efforts made to dig dirt on the family and monitor all their friends and house visitors by the Met Police's Special Demonstration Squad. They even corrupted the trust between the Lawrences and Family Liaison Officers. The stated justification of preventing public disorder has been used by tyrannical regimes for decades.

It would appear that Jack Straw was deceived throughout by a Special Branch campaign, presumably through the friendly tabloids, to destroy the Lawrence's family name by formulating false links to criminality. Straw, said yesterday, the secret operation was, "a perversion of police resources, priorities and principles." Duwayne Brookes, Stephen's best mate, now a Councillor was set up on a charge of criminal damage. He was well used to this hostile treatment having been falsely accused of two petty crimes carried out within Eltham police station on the night of Stephen's murder.

Neville Lawrence said the family's decisions throughout was to, "use the courts". It is the ultimate irony that it was the police, the upholders of the law, who were pursuing an obsession to taint the Lawrences as criminally dubious while the family themselves maintained their faith in a corrupt Criminal Justice System.

We have already learned of the revelations of undercover police forming long-term relationships, fathering children and using dead children's identities. There will be more to come: there were about 130 officers leading double lives to trap families and protestors into criminal charges for what appears to be political motives against liberals, environmentalists, campaigners and civil rights activists. This operation amounts to an assault on democracy.

As Straw has said, the critical question is, "how high up" the knowledge and authorisation went. An investigation chaired by a judge would struggle to uncover these deep layers of official deceit. The offer of the current Home Sec to leave it to other police and one barrister to determine the truth is derisory. Small wonder Neville Lawrence has dismised this offer out of hand as "unacceptable". The police have not even felt it necessary to apologise to the women whose lives have been ripped apart by this serial undercover operation when they fell into relationships with spying officers and so could not have given "informed consent".

Chief Constable Mick Creedon, Head of Operation Herne, which will not report until at least 2016, hardly fulfills our confidence by his blase attitude to human dignity and happiness. In an inteview with the Guardian, he said he did not feel like exposing the whole scale of surveillance and duplicity: "'The way the world is now, that will fizz around the internet networks instantly,' he said, adding that he saw little benefit in "raking up" the issue with parents who would otherwise remain oblivious."

Creedon already appears to be unable to seek the transparency which would properly expose these outrageous actions and we will be waiting years in any case. Few could seriously expect one of their own to bring down a fellow senior officer. I mean, when did that last happen? The precedents are not all inspiring.

Loony Tunes

When Jeremy Hunt (left) said, yesterday, the Conservatives were "united" in their approach to the EU he probably meant it, regardless of what the general public think of growing civil war in his party.

He probably believed it when he said it was the Labour Party who had the real problem. He probably even believes in all that guff about the "global race" and how a pointless legal change about an in/out referendum will be an expression of the will of the people.

With all this posturing he is convincing no-one. But that is the style of this Government, it has never felt  like persuasion, getting down and dirty, was necessary. It has felt leadership commands deference from the public and its core supporters. To call them "mad, swivel eyed loons" captures the gap between the ground troops and the officer's mess rather well. If anyone of Thatcher, Heath or Major's administration had so insulted the activists pounding the streets, he would have been sacked on the spot. All that is denied but even if Feldman did say it, Cameron would feel frankly, you know, sort of rather embarrassed to give a chap his marching orders when they are all such good chums going way back.

The disunity within the party is virulent and worsening, any damn fool can see that. The reasonable voices are being drowned out by the whack jobs. Geoffrey Howe's bit in the Observer was a throw back to how a politician used to write articles, unafraid of writing intelligently, with full historical context. The other side are not listening: they are imbued with purpose derived from their political momentum. They appear to have forgotten disunity plays very badly with the public who rate the EU about 10th on their priorities well behind, jobs, growth and living standards.

At least when John Major went to war with his "bastards" it was a simple argument to follow. The Maastrict Treaty brought us a little closer to EU politically - they hated that. Cameron's position cannot be summarised in less than about 1,000 words and is so full of twist and turns, humiliating contradictions and bare-faced hypocrisy.

But suffice it to say, a vote on a referendum will not be passed in the Commons, if it did it would not bind the next Parliament, if Cons won the election (ha!) Cameron would vote to stay in. Also the much repeated "renegotiation" with EU is doomed because any of the other 27 countries can veto any aspect of it and any concession granted will be judged by people like John Redwood and Peter Bone who won't be satisfied until the Channel Tunnel is dynamited.

Cameron is now like the prefect who everyone has discovered has a father "in trade". His authority is dwindling by the day, his Defence Secretary casually mentions he would support leaving the EU, gets a "now, look here" talking to, then the next day disavows the Government's policy on gay marriage.

Cameron's problem is that he expects people to follow by mere dint of him being leader. Now they are leading him into political oblivion.

Future Buried in the Past

Everyone is allowed to express a little extra kindness to the recently departed. It is only a truism to say that eulogies are not objective.

But the death today of (Lady) Margaret Thatcher has prompted the most fawning statements from her political offspring in the modern Conservative Party. Former Cabinet member, Lord (Ken) Baker said when she left office, the UK was the strongest economy in Europe when clearly (West) Germany had outperformed Britain since the late 1960s.

David Cameron went even further by claiming, “she didn’t just lead the country…she saved it.” To be a British saviour is a quality only really attributable to Churchill.  Such prosaic tributes and nauseating hyperbole give a highly false impression of such a domineering figure in Britain’s history.

Former London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, did not cow to the obsequious mood and said, “her legacy was fundamentally wrong.” He pointed to the sale of council houses as root cause of a chronic shortage of housing now. Her tax and industrial policies created the underclass of benefit dependency and as a female politician she did nothing for women’s rights whatsoever.

The Conservatives’ toadying tributes all point to her political demise in 1990 as PM as being prompted by the introduction of the iniquitous flat rate local ‘poll’ tax. One or two suggest she had gone too far over her opposition to policies over the European Union. The truth is she had lost her mental faculties to be able to carry out the onerous task of being Prime Minister. Increasingly eccentric public performances in Parliament were matched by delusional behaviour around the Cabinet table as chronicled by her Deputy Geoffrey Howe when she sacked him in fit of pique.

Many of the political class who are describing her as a great patriot are deeply selective of her version of it. Certainly she, by her powerful political will, enabled the Falkland Islands to be recaptured in 1982. But equally in her determination to break the National Union of Mineworkers in the 1984-5 strike, she ensured the price the country paid was the loss of energy self-sufficiency.

There are few political figures who have attracted such adoration and opprobrium in equal measure. Former French President Francois Mitterand captured both sides when he said, “ She has the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe.” Dr Jonathan Miller said, “ her odious suburban gentility and sentimental, saccharine patriotism, cater to the worst elements of commuter idiocy.”

It is not altogether easy to find many of Thatcher’s achievements made simply for the good of her fellow man. But she did introduce harm reduction measures and needle exchanges to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS in mid 80s. Her scientific background overcame what appeared to be a highly toxic media issue at the time.

However her political philosophy was heavily influenced by Neo-Conservatives Keith Joseph and the discredited Enoch Powell. Her view that there was “no such thing as society,” will be her epitaph – these words constitute a philosophical heartlessness based on economic consumerism and acquisitiveness as the sole path to the nation’s happiness.

She detested her predecessor’s, Ted Heath, “One Nation” approach and he hated her back. At a formal photograph of former PMs, he was asked if he could stand further to the right of her, “Not sure that’s actually possible,” he grumbled. Her unyielding support for Chilean tyrant General Pinochet during his arrest in Britain in 1998 showed she was morally fallible. 

But her impact on the Conservative Party is still immense. In the Shires of rural Britain, David Cameron is still compared highly unfavourably to her 23 years after she was deselected by her backbenchers, as were the other four party leaders in between.

In many ways Thatcher’s greatest mark has been on her own party, the Conservative Party have only been victorious in one election since she won easily in 1987. All subsequent leaders have been trying to emulate her dominance and conviction but have simply come across as divisive.  

That ultimately is Thatcher’s legacy: a nation uneasy with itself and a party trying to recapture the elusive past.

You Don't Belong Here

There is a long, long convention that Ministers say, "it would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases." The principle reason being that any detail of a simple issue case, when put up against a multi-faceted policy, can come back to bite them in the butt.

But you get the feeling that the Conservatives are feeling a little desperate about the election of 2015 already and are seizing recklessly on any case of immigration or welfare payments which can perpetuate the idea that foreigners and the poor are scroungers and if not borderline criminal then actually criminal.

The murders of six children in Derby by their feckless, reprobate father, Mick Philpott had so many sickening aspects it was often hard to follow the case. After so many biased news stories against welfare recipients it was hardly surprising the Mail felt able to make the twisted and foul judgement that their murderer was not intrinsically self-obsessed and evil but simply a "product of welfare UK".

DWP Minister, Esther McVey, refused to endorse such socially divisive views on Channel 4 News on Wednesday. But next day, Chancellor George Osborne, coincidentally in Derby, started hinting heavily that the deaths were caused by a certain "lifestyle" as if it were a predictable consequence of giving the undeserving poor any money. It was perhaps intellectual laziness but more likely some talking points prompted by back room Svengali, Lynton Crosby, as was, one suspects, Cameron's recent speech castigating the non-existent threat of scrounger immigrants.

Osborne's vitriolic speech this week on benefit changes means the Mail has now been gifted the lead on the debate, always an invidious place to be. But Crosby, IDS and Cameron are firmly of the view this flagellation of the poor  is popular with the non-poor partly because reading these papers for so many years has given the impression that any claimant is a chancer and an enemy within.

The Mail yesterday included a story of a woman who claimed she could live on £1 a day, "anyone can do it," she blithely wittered. There are vast amounts of human interest stories of, for example, dying people being declared fit for work which these papers refuse to print. These editors are more content giving voice to the confused drivel of a single woman pinching soft fruits from hedgerows as a sustainable "lifestyle" for hundreds of thousands of disabled people.

We can expect many more bitter attacks between now and the elections, the Tories look like getting a drubbing in the locals next month particularly in marginal areas like Derbyshire. However this demonisation can only be a diminishing return as more people reflect on the harsh, unyielding judgmental language on poor families from privileged and insincere men.

March them Down Again

David Cameron surpassed himself yesterday by his own low standards of political strategy.

By suddenly dissolving the all-party negotiations over Leveson, he has handed himself an inevitable political humiliation on Monday's vote. He has also made the issue of press standards a party political one when it never should have been.

It is hard to unpick his precise reasoning. On the face of it, he did it because, after three months since Judge Brian reported, frustration has grown among backbenchers. Some have laid amendments on other legislation, such as the Defamation Bill and it was just a mtter of time before one was passed.

Dave first threatened to act like some constitutional vandal by dumping those Bills entirely, accusing the opposition members of hijacking the legislation and "grandstanding". But it never looks good, even for the PM, to waste hundreds of hours of Parliamentary time. And last time I looked, the democratic principle allowed MPs to lay amendments and if they were successfully voted for, then the Executive had to bow to the will of Parliament.

He may be taking bad advice from the somewhat inexperienced group of No.10 SpAds. He may just think he will be celebrated as an advocate of press freedom when others, like the DPM, wish to 'shackle' it. Good luck with that. I get the feeling he was just bored of the whole consultation bit and just wanted to exert his authority.

In the ensuing media discussions, the PM's position was supported pretty much uniquely by former executive editor of the NOTW, Neil Wallis (pictured), who called the body representing the victims of his old newspaper's harassment and bullying, nothing more than, "fanatics" and "ayatollahs". Wallis himself will not face charges and he even penned a weepy article about how weally woughly he was tweated by the Criminal Justice system. But the same day Wallis was making clear his trenchant views on various news sofas, the former Ethics Editor of the Press Complaints Committee was arrested for allegations into phone hacking at the Sunday Mirror.

Cameron's position, such as it is, is to have a Royal Charter on regulation but not backed by statute. That means its governance would be held by the Privy Council, in other words senior Ministers whose decisions are not accountable nor even recorded for the public. His boast that it would deliver the "toughest rules on the press we have ever seen" is not saying a lot as we've never had any effective ones before. He will present some proposal on Monday for a late sitting where this whole bally thing can be sorted out.

As one journalist mentioned yesterday, the newspapers who feel a paranoid threat about any form of regulation rarely publish the opinion polls which show overwhelming public support for these measures. Between now and Monday we can expect screaming editorials and opinion pieces which will convince no-one. Patrick Kavanagh in the Sun today said the free press, "has been the defender of the ordinary citizen against the rich and powerful." 

Many ordinary citizens, like the McCanns and Dowlers, had their personal lives destroyed for the sake of circulation figures for the rich and powerful press owners. He even had the gall to use the Hillsborough "cover-up" as a compelling reason for a free press when it his newspaper which printed hateful lies about the Liverpool fans which perpetuated the idea that they were to blame and not the police. 

Some of the comments are frankly laughable. According to the Mail, it is Hugh Grant, their bete noir, who is instructing the shadow cabinet at every stage, "cravenly trying to appease a faded film star with a rackety sex life."

In essence, unfettered press freedom has not enhanced democracy it has damaged it. Whatever the outcome we have been reminded Cameron seems to lack those deal making qualities one could assume a PM would have. The art of the possible they used to call it.

Helter Skelter

So one by-election never sets the future for success. But it can be a damn good indicator for failure.

There used to be a convention of the PM not getting involved in any by-election as any unexpected failure would personally damage their standing. Cameron has never been one for sensible convention and has blithely ploughed his own furrow to disaster.

He even agreed to the Whips office setting up a PMQ where he took a swipe at the less than honest former MP for Eastleigh, Chris Huhne. "I hope all my hon. Friends will join me on the campaign trail in Eastleigh—what I would say to people in Eastleigh is that if they want a straight-talking candidate who does exactly what it says on the tin, Maria Hutchings is a local mum and a fantastic campaigner, and she would make a great Member of Parliament."


The Tories started as odds on favourites and with every Ministerial appearance lost more ground in the polls. The candidate did not help her case by slating state education as not good enough for anyone wishing to become a surgeon.  She was then obviously micro managed by central office which only antagonises the voting public as much as not turning up for debates. She was also advised by that master tactician, IDS to emphasise Huhne's singular quality as a "liar" forgetting that is an attribute most people would asign to any MP.

This seat was only no.12 on the Cons must-win list for the next General Election so to slip to third behind UKIP and the scandal ravaged Lib-Dems was truly a catastrophic outcome. What we are witnessing now is a split on the right equivalent to the one on the left thirty years ago which took over about fifteen years to fix. UKIP are still on the rise and in Nigel Farage they have an excellent communicator who sounds straightforward and succinct when his opponents wriggle and dissemble. Local and Euro elections beckon and Nige can't wait.

But you wouldn't know they were  problem to listen to, Conservative Party Chairman, Grants Schapps's synopsis. His first point was the electorate have voted for a pro Europe candidate when most voted for a Con or UKIP. The issue of the EU is most important to three percent of voters. He also reminded listeners that in 2010 the Conservatives "went on to win the General Election." Er...you didn't and there's the rub.

The remainder of Schapp's nonsense was aimed at the Labour Party who were a distant fourth although held their own while LDs and Cons both lost about 15 points. If his conclusions on the result were so wrong-headed then his suggestion for a remedy could only be utterly worthless.

Osbourne was unable to find any way of changing tack on the economy when UK lost its AAA rating a week ago and now it looks like the Conservatives are entering a whole new episode of division and electoral failure from which there appeears no path of retreat any longer. They keep citing Mrs Thatcher and her determination to stick to the task. What the current PM is confusing is political resolution and pure bloody mindeness based on unassailable arrogance.

Get Back...You Dogs

Ian Duncan Smith does not like the term 'bedroom tax' .

His offended sensibilities notwithstanding ("nonsense!"), the bedroom tax is now in common parlance for the much derided change in housing benefits due next month. The policy, voted for by Conservatives and Lib-Dems, means a 14 percent cut in benefits for anyone in social housing on housing benefit with a spare room.

It makes no difference if the room is occupied by foster children or less regularly by children from separated parents or even members of the armed forces on active duty.

On the Andrew Marr Show he showed his notorious tetchiness citing "a million empty bedrooms". His limited power of argument was further exposed on LBC. It does not seem to occur to IDS nor his acolytes that these million rooms are in a million homes. The policy appears to suggest the lower classes should be able to pack themselves into houses regardless of family ties and relationships.

The choice facing these families is stark and false: to accept the cut or move house when no-one is suggesting there are sufficient numbers of smaller rentable property available. Polly Toynbee in the Guardian expressed it in manageable terms, "in Hull the bedroom tax hits 4,700 families with a spare room, and only 73 small properties free". I would have thought the cost of moving would negate any financial 'advantage' in any event.

IDS's department has also instigated a forced labour programme for young unemployed which was deemed unlawful last week by the Appeal Court (IDS reportedly "astounded") in a case brought by Cait Reilly, a Geology graduate compelled to stack shelves in Poundland. In a display of exemplary Philistinism, Duncan Smith elevated the social contribution of shelf stackers above Geology graduates. His spiteful sniping at those, "who think they are too good for this sort of thing" may be driven by his own lack of a degree.

And almost as an aside, he referred to the human 'right to family life', in respect of deportations as if it were some deviant ploy rather than the cornerstone of society.

IDS may be talking tough to placate the Chancellor who think he has a soft middle and is due a demotion. No matter, the result is to consider and treat people like ignorant, selfish and contemptible commodities.